Reporter won't have to testify in Carroll case

Times-Union reporter Matt Dixon will not have to testify in the state’s case against a former aide to Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, a Leon County judge ruled this week.

Dixon also is the Tallahassee bureau chief of The St. Augustine Record.

State prosecutors had petitioned Judge Frank Sheffield to force Dixon to appear before them in the case of Carletha Cole, accused of breaking the law by recording a conversation in Carroll’s office and leaking in to the newspaper.

In his ruling released Thursday, Sheffield cited First Amendment protections, including cases where information was given to a reporter in violation of the law.

“Any information or knowledge possessed by Matt Dixon relating to matters material to the Cole case was gathered for the purposes of writing news stories,” Sheffield wrote. “Information obtained by a journalist while newsgathering is protected from disclosure by qualified privilege under the United States Constitution, the Florida Constitution, the Florida Statutes, and the common law.”

Times-Union editor Frank Denton agreed.

“We applaud the decision by Judge Sheffield and appreciate his wisdom in upholding the journalist’s privilege,” Denton said. “This is good news for citizens because, in this case, it prevents the state from using a reporter as an informant, witness or investigator, when prosecutors have other ways of making their case. Journalists don’t belong in witness chairs.”

Cole secretly recorded a conversation between her and Carroll’s chief of staff, Jon Konkus, in September 2011. On it, Konkus can be heard saying Scott’s chief of staff at the time, Steve McNamara, was afraid of the lieutenant governor. Konkus also criticized the governor for “not leading.”

Cole told Dixon that Carroll’s office was so dysfunctional — calling it “like a juvenile school” — that it threatened the Scott administration’s ability to run the state. Hours after the interview was posted on Jacksonville.com, Cole was fired.

Three days later, the Times-Union posted the recording of the Cole-Konkus conversation on Jacksonville.com. The release prompted an inquiry by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Cole’s eventual arrest and indictment.

Cole later alleged, through a court filing by her attorney, that she caught Carroll and another aide, Beatriz Ramos, in a “compromising position” in Carroll’s office. That prompted a public denial by Carroll, who said “black women who look like me don’t engage in relationships like that.”

In denying the state, Sheffield wrote that everything the state required was already public.

“Information contained in any articles published in The Florida Times-Union are available for the state attorney’s use,” he wrote. “The state attorney has not established that he needs information beyond what is contained in published news articles.